So! Last week my friend Maile and I went to the Mom 2.0 Summit and it was quite lovely but we decided that instead of posting the typical conference selfies we should change things up a bit and post the most unflattering pictures we could possibly take. We did the first one on the plane and it was so ridiculous that even instagram wouldn’t post it. It might have been a glitch but we assumed it was instagram saying, “No. You don’t mean to post this. Have you been drinking again? We’re cutting you off until you come to your senses.” But we had no senses to come to and we couldn’t stop laughing at the picture and so we shared it on twitter.
Then when we landed we found out that the picture was shared so much that it was the very thing that got the conference hashtag trending. So…yeah.
This is the point when I had to apologize to the conference organizers but they didn’t care because I’ve known them for 10 years so they knew what to expect of me. Which is “very little“. This is one advantage of having a terrible reputation.
What was nice though was that although it was a little terrifying publishing such a horrific picture it was actually also surprisingly freeing. No matter what photo we found ourselves tagged in that week we were guaranteed that it couldn’t be any worse than what we’d shared ourselves. Even if someone intentionally posted something terrible we could say, “No. Sorry. We did it worse already.” Plus, we automatically looked much better in person because we’d set up people to assume we look like giant thumbs or penises.
I was presenting an Iris Award at the conference and mostly I just hid backstage and made Andrew McCarthy uncomfortable by sitting cross-legged on the floor and staring at him, but on the way in we had to take red carpet pictures and we’d decided that there were already too many pretty people there so instead we’d just do inappropriate poses until they asked us to leave.
And that’s how you do a red carpet. Deep, royal curtsies. #WE RUIN EVERYTHING:
Other flattering red carpet poses: the 1930’s Muscle Men:
…And the eternally classic we-just-found-a-dead-body red carpet pose. Always elegant.
It only took a few minutes before they gave up and shooed us off but we still had more to give. This is my favorite and I literally laugh out loud every single time I look at it.
I did manage to take one good picture as I ran out to the nerd bus (which we self-named because we were the first people to hurry back to the hotel while everyone else started dancing) and that was a picture of my using Andrew McCarthy as a coaster. Not even intentional, y’all. I can’t take a good picture even when I’m trying. Please contact me, Mr. McCarthy, with your dry cleaning bill.
Point is, posting a terrible photo of yourself making ridiculous faces is fantastic. And hilarious. And incredibly freeing. I encourage you to do it yourself. Share it in the comments. Send it to your friends. Post it on instagram. Relive those moments when your mother would say “YOUR FACE WILL FREEZE LIKE THAT” while you and your sister laugh hysterically as you lick the car windows and make pig noses at the people driving in the next lane. Honestly, I cannot recommend it enough.
UPDATED: Everyone and their cat is doing that website where you upload your photo and the computer tells you how old you look so I decided to try it:
Oh, you flatterer.